No spoilers, for my friends on the West Coast. Following directly on from last week's Extremis, the Monks come into forefront in the middle part of a three-parter. Stylistically very different than usual, but I liked it. The middle part of the season is definitely much stronger than the early bits, and I am liking it. I am going to miss those Attack Eyebrows when they are gone.

No spoilers: Extremis is far and away the best episode so far of the new season. Questions are answered, a three story cycle is kicked off in style, and Nardole is a not-at-all-secret badass. Babydoll.

Just some quick, non-spoilery thought's on this week's new episode Thin Ice: I loved the interplay between the Doctor and Bill, and especially the Doctor's playfulness as he acclimated his new companion to time travel. There is a nice reference to The Butterfly Effect from Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder (what happend to poor Pete, indeed?). Some of the accents were a bit too thick for my poor American ears to catch the first (or even second) time around, but the interplay was clear enough it didn't really matter. On the whole I thought it was a fun episode, perhaps not stellar but certainly better than most of Capaldi's first season. My only big complaint is that there was a particularly dodgy effect at the climax of the story, bad enough to detract from the story. It wasn't quite as bad as the CGI in The Lazerus Experiment, but it wasn't much better either. I expect more from the current production team and budget.

As with last week, no spoilers above the fold out of respect for my West Coast friends. Just a quick note to say that this week's new episode Smile continues the trend of strong stories. As an added bonus, it ties directly to a story I just watched a few days ago, The Ark. No Monoids to be found, but plenty of EmojiBots. That right there is a definite step up.

Just a brief mini-post to say, "Yay! Doctor Who is back!" This one doesn't count, I didn't watch it on the treadmill and I won't circle back to it for nearly two years. But still... I like Bill a lot, and it looks like Peter Capaldi is going to go out on a strong season. No spoilers, because my west coast friends haven't seen it yet. I'll just say - the thing I was worried about turned out not to be a thing. It's so nice to see Capaldi be allowed to play warmth, after his first series spent so much time with him playing alien and inhuman. I am very disappointed he won't be around longer. In any case, this season has started off strong and I am very much looking forward to the rest of it. Yay!